Rp 60b needed to return 11,000 families of Poso refugees

Rp 60b needed to return 11,000 families of Poso refugees

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Poso, Central Sulawesi

Poppy, a 32-year-old Christian mother and wife wept over the
hardships suffered by herself, her husband and her two young
children since they had been forced to take refuge after the
third replacement house they had built was burned down last
December.

She, along with some 180 other Christian families, was forced
to flee her home village in Bategincu, Lage district, Poso
regency, soon after the sectarian conflict erupted there early in
1999.

"We are fed up with living in these deplorable conditions. We
are bored waiting for nothing here. We want to go back home but
we are afraid to do so as the situation in the district is still
tense," she told Vice President Hamzah Haz during a five-minute
visit by the latter to the refuge camp in Tentena.

Wati and Ade, two other women, echoed Poppy's experiences, and
said that the government should resettle them in other areas as
it had stopped providing humanitarian aid for the refugees in
January, 2003.

Poradjo, Poppy's husband, said his family was living in
conditions of dire hardship as the only work available was on
local farms for a daily wage of around Rp 10,000. "It's not
enough to cover our daily needs. It would be better for us to go
back home but we are still traumatized by the burning down of our
house," he said, adding that it had been built with financial
assistance from the government in January, the most recent of
three houses belonging to him that had been set ablaze since the
eruption of the conflict.

The situation in Poso is gradually returning to normal even
though the conflict has yet to be resolved comprehensively.

A large mosque and many houses that were ransacked and
torched during the conflict have yet to be rebuilt. The same
thing applies to dozens of ruined churches and houses in Poso
town.

Different government agencies cite different figures on the
number of refugees, with the generally accepted figure being over
11,000. The refugees are spread across Poso, Donggala and
Marowali regencies, as well as Makassar, Gorontalo and North
Sulawesi.

Andi Azikin, chief of the local social affairs office,
regretted the lack of an organized response to the refugee
problem, and said this was due to the absence of proper
coordination between security authorities, the local
administration, and the task force trying to reconcile the two
conflicting camps.

He blamed the task force for the refugees' reluctance to go
back home as reconciliation had yet to be brought about in many
of the villages that were worst hit by the conflict.

"We have distributed humanitarian and financial aid, and
resettlement funds to refugees, but many who had built new homes
ended up returning to the refuge camp after these new homes were
burned down again," he said, adding that his office had
distributed Rp 60 billion to more than 13,000 families, and
needed another Rp 60 billion to resettle the remaining 11,000
families taking refuge in South, Central and North Sulawesi, and
Gorontalo.

He suggested that a rehabilitation program should be carried
out in villages and districts where the two communities have
reconciled their differences as was required under the peace
agreement signed in Malino, South Sulawesi, on Dec. 21, 2001.

Poso regent Abdul Muin Pusadan conceded there were
difficulties being faced in handling the refugee problem due to
the tense situation in several districts in the regency.

He was referring to the decreasing role the task force had
been playing in campaigning for the peace agreement, bringing
about reconciliation between the conflicting communities and
providing information on violations of the law before and after
the peace accord's signing.

Both the governor and the regent called on the central
government to maintain the deployment of more than 2,200 police
personnel and 1,600 military personnel in the regency.

The police have yet to investigate all the crimes that were
committed, thus giving rise to a lot of dissatisfaction with the
implementation of the peace agreement.

"We have asked the task force to give us their preliminary
data on violations of the law to allow the police to investigate
them, but so far only major incidents that were highlighted by
the press have been investigated," said Brig. Gen. Taufik Ridha,
the Central Sulawesi Police chief.

He said that all elements in the task force had been trying to
deal with the crimes committed by their own supporters in the
past.

According to Taufik, the peace accord would not bring about
justice for either side unless all crimes were investigated.

Pusadan expressed the fear that the failure to fully implement
the ten-point Malino peace accord could trigger further conflict
in the run-up to the 2004 general and presidential elections.

"That is why we are proposing that the central government
maintain the presence of the more than 3,500 security personnel
that are currently in the regency," he said.

Hamzah, who appeared less than responsive to the half-hearted
implementation of the peace accord, called on local officials and
religious leaders to actively participate in calming down the
situation.

"Like the conflicts in Aceh, Papua, Maluku and Kalimantan, the
sectarian conflict in Poso has a lot to do with widening social
disparities, the common enemy the nation is fighting against," he
said during a meeting with religious figures and local officials.

The Vice President called on locals and their leaders to
condemn the U.S. war against Iraq but said nothing regarding a
comprehensive resolution to the sectarian problems in the
regency.